212 A Simplified Expert Elicitation Guideline (PSAM-0089)

This paper describes a simplified, tractable, and usable guideline within the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for seeking expert opinion and judgment. The NRC has increased efforts to document the reliability and risk of nuclear power plants (NPPs) through Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) and Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) models. The Significance Determination Process (SDP) and Accident Sequence Precursor (ASP) programs at the NRC utilize expert judgment on the rate of failure, human error, and the operability of equipment in cases where otherwise insufficient operational data exist to make meaningful estimates. In the past, the SDP and ASP programs informally sought the opinion of experts inside and outside the NRC. This document represents a formal, documented guideline to take the place of informal expert elicitation. The steps outlined in this paper follow existing formal expert elicitation methodologies, but are streamlined as appropriate to the degree of accuracy required and the schedule for producing SDP and ASP analyses.